A Shining Lakewood Star!

5/6/07 New York City : On a beautiful, sunny spring day in May, the city of Lakewood was proudly represented by a special group of Lakewood High School students who had traveled together by bus all the way to New York City to sing at one of the world's most prestigious performing arts venues, Carnegie Hall.

You’re a thirty-five-year-old lawyer. You gave birth to your first child one month ago. You are breast feeding, but your baby is having choking episodes. You’re frustrated. Litigation was easier.

NATIONAL VOLUNTEER WEEK

I’ve started this article a dozen times. I’ve started it with humorous quotes from a Lakewood police officer who has two children, now young adults. I’ve started it with the suicide account of a gay Lakewood teen. I’ve started it with the murder of Matthew Shepard and the recent hatchet and gun attack in a Boston bar. I’ve deleted them all. Simply, with no humor, no frightening vignettes, I am writing about tender lives, the lives of children who happen to be gay.

On November, 16, 2005, Albert Panza, an 86-year-old Lakewood resident, collapsed in the third floor atrium of Lakewood Hospital. Three times a week for four years he had been attending the cardiac rehabilitation program. That day, he was at the hospital to attend a party. He brought along a box of cookies. He took a piece of cake. He sat down at a table with others. Then he lost consciousness.